Sunday, May 10, 2015

A00461 - Miroslav Ondricek, Cinematographer for "Amadeus" and "Ragtime"

Miroslav Ondricek, Cinematographer for ‘Amadeus’ and ‘Ragtime,’ Dies at 80

By MATTHEW HEALEY
Miroslav Ondricek with a cinematography award in 2004.Michal Dolezal/CTK, via Associated Press
Miroslav Ondricek, a cameraman whose intimate, realist style propelled him from Communist Czechoslovakia to a successful career in Hollywood, where he was nominated for two Academy Awards for cinematography, died on March 28 in Prague. He was 80.
His son, David, a film director, announced the news to a Czech television station. He did not give a cause.
Mr. Ondricek (pronounced OND-ree-chek) was best known for his work with the director Milos Forman, a fellow Czech émigré. Among other films, they collaborated on “Ragtime,” a 1981 adaptation of the E.L. Doctorow novel; “Amadeus” (1984), about the life of Mozart; “Hair” (1979), an adaptation of the Broadway musical; and “Valmont” (1989), a romantic drama set in 18th-century France based on the novel “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.”
Mr. Ondricek’s two Academy Award nominations were for “Ragtime” and “Amadeus,” which won the best picture Oscar.
In a filmography that stretched to some 40 titles, Mr. Ondricek also worked with Mike Nichols, George Roy Hill, Lindsay Anderson and Penny Marshall, among other directors.
With Ms. Marshall he shot “Awakenings,” a 1990 drama with Robin Williams based on a memoir by the neurologist Oliver Sacks; “A League of Their Own,” the 1992 tale of a women’s baseball team during World War II, starring Geena Davis and Tom Hanks; and his final feature, “Riding in Cars With Boys,” starring Drew Barrymore, in 2001.
“He watched,” Ms. Marshall recalled on Thursday, emphasizing the verb. “A lot of the foreign D.P.’s would go out and read the paper,” she said, referring to directors of photography. “But Mirek would stand by the camera, and if he didn’t like something, he’d walk on set and fix it. Nobody understood a word he said, but the actors loved him.”
Miroslav Ondricek was born in Prague on Nov. 4, 1934. The Communist regime that came to power after World War II forbade him to stay in school past the age of 15 because his father was a member of the bourgeoisie, so he trained as an ironworker.
He found a laboratory job in the state-run film studios and was eventually able to attend film school at night. After a dozen years making newsreels, he finally got behind the camera on a feature film just as the Czech New Wave was beginning to gain attention around the world.
The director Ivan Passer introduced him to Mr. Forman, and the two hit it off, working together on Mr. Forman’s early masterpieces “Loves of a Blonde” and “The Firemen’s Ball,” which was banned by the Communist authorities shortly after its release for its critique of a corrupt society.
Tom Hulce as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the 1984 film "Amadeus." The Saul Zaentz Company
Mr. Forman settled in the United States. Although Mr. Ondricek was permitted to go abroad to make films, he never emigrated from Czechoslovakia and continued working there in the 1970s.
In 2004, he received the International Award from the American Society of Cinematographers.
In his final interview, given in the summer of 2014 to the Czech daily Lidove Noviny, Mr. Ondricek was asked what he thought had been his main contribution to cinematography.
“I guess a naturalness,” he said, adding, “I began as a newsman, a documentarian,” and cited his early works with Mr. Forman as examples of a realist sensibility that grabbed audiences in the 1960s.
“I never understood how the old masters did it,” he said. “They’d light a scene, set the camera, then go out for a cigarette with the director. They just weren’t at the shoot. I lived through the film, and I loved it.”
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A00460 - Tom Koch, Comedy Writer for Bob and Ray

Tom Koch, 89, Dies; Comedy Writer Invented a 43-Man Game

By 
Tom Koch, left, with Jonathan Winters, in an undated photo.
Tom Koch, a creator of the vexingly convoluted game 43-man Squamishfor Mad magazine and unheralded author of thousands of comedy scripts for Bob and Ray radio programs that in his words parodied “pompous versions of real people,” died on March 22 at his home in Laguna Woods, Calif. He was 89.
The cause was pulmonary failure, said his son, John.
Mr. Koch (pronounced “cook”) and George Woodbridge unveiled Squamish in Issue No. 95 of Mad in 1965 as an alternative to the creeping professionalism of college sports. It was June, and students with fertile imaginations and too much spare time rose to the challenge, staging Squamish matches on campuses across the country.
Rooted in Klishball and Stiffleball, Squamish is supposed to be played on a pentagonal field, or Flutney. Players can carry, kick or throw a spheroid Pritz, three and three-quarters inches in diameter, made from untreated ibex hide stuffed with blue jay feathers. They have five Snivels, or downs, within which to score, generally by running across the goal line (for a 17-point Woomik) or smacking the Pritz across the line with a Frullip, a stick shaped like a shepherd’s crook and usually wielded by the defense to block the other team from scoring.
Mr. Koch was also a staff writer for Tennessee Ernie Ford, Dave Garroway, George Gobel, Pat Paulsen, Dinah Shore and Jonathan Winters and wrote episodes for television series, from hits like “The Lucy Show” and “All in the Family” to less successful shows like “My Mother the Car.”
He also wrote the script for Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding’s “A Cure for California,” which won an Emmy Award. He was most prolific, though, writing for Bob and Ray’s regular radio programs, turning out almost 3,000 sketches in the 33 years after he was recruited in 1955 as their silent partner.
“He certainly contributed a big part of the Bob and Ray repertoire on radio,” Mr. Elliott said Wednesday.
“They usually ad-libbed their stuff,” Mr. Koch told The Los Angeles Times in 1996, “but NBC didn’t want things going out over the network without knowing what was coming in advance, so they asked me to start writing for them.”
In his book “Bob and Ray, Keener Than Most Persons” (2013), David Pollock quoted Nick Meglin, a Mad editor, as recalling: “It became very clear after a while that even B&R didn’t know where their voice began and Tom’s ended. They were inseparable.”
As a result, in three-and-a-half-page, five-minute scripts, radio audiences were introduced to the president of the Slow Talkers of America; the hapless detectives in Squad Car 119; a bridge builder who went bankrupt (listeners could hear cars splashing in the background); the executive secretary of the Parsley Society of America bemoaning the per capita decline in consumption; and the bumbling correspondent Wally Ballou’s report from a prefabricated igloo factory in Greenland where the temperature was kept at 30 degrees below zero to keep the components from melting.
In 1965, Mr. Koch was a creator of 43-Man Squamish, promoted as a sport for amateurs everywhere.Mad Magazine
The shows also featured sendups of soap operas and heartbreakers, including “Hard Luck Stories,” in which guests related tales of personal misfortune and were given incongruous gifts.
Ray (as a concerned mother): “My little Sandra has cuticles growing halfway up her fingernails, and the outstanding cuticle man has his clinic in Auburn, Indiana.”
Bob: “There’s nothing more touching than a mother’s devotion to her child. We want you to have this beautiful set of burnished fireplace tools. There’s a poker and a shovel and everything you’ll need.”
Recurring characters included Mr. Science, Fred Falvy the Do-It-Yourselfer and Edna Bessinger, a character in the saga “The Gathering Dusk,” who was inspired by Mr. Koch’s Aunt Esther, who found misfortune “by hunting for it where others have failed to look.” In one episode, an exasperated F.B.I. agent assures her that the “underground” activity across the street is not a covert Communist cell meeting but workers repairing a sewer pipe.
Thomas Freeman Koch was born in Charleston, Ill., on May 13, 1925. His father, Elmer, was a salesman. His mother, the former Rachel Freeman, was a homemaker. The noted illustrator Harvey Emrich was a cousin.
He received a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s in political science from Northwestern University. His began his broadcasting career in Chicago, then got tired of turning out 100 pages a week for Mr. Garroway’s “Monitor” radio program in New York and moved in with his wife’s family in St. Louis.
When he was recruited to write for Bob and Ray as their schedule became more hectic, he had only seen them on television and had never written comedy before. But the job had two advantages: He found the duo funny, and he could write from home. He sent them 10 scripts. They bought eight.
“Then I did another 10 and from that point on I don’t think they ever rejected a script,” he said.
Except for one. In his book “Seriously Funny” (2003), Gerald Nachman, who described Mr. Koch as “an anonymous genius,” wrote that his parody of “The Waltons” was vetoed as too acerbic.
Mr. Elliott, who turned 92 on March 26, said that he had met Mr. Koch three times and that Mr. Goulding (who died in 1990) had seen him face to face only once. The scripts came by mail.
“He would send us a week’s worth of bits, eight or 10, and we would use every one of them,” he recalled. “It was great when the Tom Koch package arrived.”
Mr. Koch never had a contract, though, and got paid by the piece. “Sometimes they sent me money, sometimes they didn’t,” he said.
He was never credited on air, which was typical of radio.
“I feel we didn’t give him a real shake that he should have had,” Mr. Elliott later wrote.
Mr. Koch was married three times and divorced twice. In addition to his son, from his first marriage, to Alice Methudy, he is survived by three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
“People would say I must have had such a great life doing this,” Mr. Koch once recalled, “people who were engineers, doctors, insurance salesmen or whatever. But it was the kind of work where every morning I would wake up and think, ‘My God, I wonder if I can do it again today.’ There is no way you prepare to do it, or even know how you do it.”
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A00459 - John Paul Hammerschmidt, Congressman Who Defeated Clinton

John Paul Hammerschmidt, 92, Dies; Congressman Defeated Clinton

By 
John Paul Hammerschmidt defeated Bill Clinton in 1974.Danny Johnston/Associated Press
John Paul Hammerschmidt, who defeated Bill Clinton in the future president’s first political campaign and was the first Republican congressman from Arkansas since Reconstruction, died on Wednesday in Springdale, Ark. He was 92.
The cause was heart and respiratory failure, said his son and only survivor, John Arthur Hammerschmidt.
Mr. Hammerschmidt defeated an 11-term incumbent, James William Trimble, in 1966, making him the first Republican in Arkansas to win a federal election in the 20th century. Winthrop Rockefeller, the brother of Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York, topped the ticket that year to become the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction.
The 1974 campaign was considered Mr. Hammerschmidt’s closest. While personally free of scandal, he was assailed by Mr. Clinton, then a 28-year-old University of Arkansas law professor, as one of the few Republicans still supporting President Richard M. Nixon after the Watergate scandal.
Mr. Hammerschmidt won by a relatively narrow margin: 52 percent to 48 percent, or about 6,000 votes out of more than 170,000 cast.
Mr. Clinton was elected state attorney general two years later and successfully ran for governor in 1978.
Mr. Hammerschmidt served 13 terms, but did not seek another in 1992. His legislative record included protecting the Buffalo National River from overdevelopment.
Born in Harrison, Ark., on May 4, 1922, he was the son of Arthur Hammerschmidt, a lumberman, and the former Junie Taylor, a homemaker.
He attended the Citadel in Charleston, S.C., the University of Arkansas and Oklahoma State University, and later earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Canbourne University in London.
He enlisted in the Army Air Corps and, commissioned as a second lieutenant, served as a combat pilot during World War II.
He flew 217 missions in the China-Burma-India theater. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and retired from the Air Force Reserve as a major.
In 1948, he married Virginia Sharp. She died in 2006.
He later recalled that he was raised in a Democratic family but began attending Republican gatherings because those groups were more accommodating to outsiders. He became the Republican state chairman.
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Saturday, May 9, 2015

A00458 - Kayahan, Turkish Singer and Songwriter





Kayahan, Turkish Singer-Songwriter, Dies at 66

By SEBNEM ARSU






Kayahan released nearly two dozen albums.

ISTANBUL — Kayahan, one of Turkey’s most popular singers and songwriters, died here on April 3. He was 66.
The cause was lung cancer, which he had since 1990, Acibadem Maslak Hospital said in a statement.
Kayahan, whose full name was Kayahan Acar, released his first album in 1975 and went on to release nearly two dozen more. Best known for his love songs, he built his musical legacy on his use of idiomatic Turkish to describe emotions. Many of his songs are considered pop classics.
His many hits, which he often sang with Nilufer, one of Turkey’s leading female singers, made him one of the best-selling Turkish musicians of all time. His concerts, including some that were fund-raisers for environmental causes, drew large crowds at home and abroad. One concert, in Ankara, drew more than 170,000 people.
Kayahan was born in Izmir, Turkey, on March 29, 1949. He first won global recognition at the 1986 International Mediterranean Music Contest in Antalya, a Turkish Mediterranean town, and in 1990 he represented Turkey in the Eurovision Song Contest with his composition“Gozlerinin Hapsindeyim” (“I Am Entrapped by Your Eyes”). The song did not win, but it became a hit at home.
His last memorable public performance was an open-air Valentine’s Day concert in Istanbul in February. He got out of his sickbed to sing with his wife, Ipek Acar, and Nilufer.
Besides his wife, Kayahan’s survivors include two daughters, Beste and Asli Gonul.
“We are in grief over losing Kayahan, who contributed to Turkish music with countless compositions and marked a generation with his songs,” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Twitter.
_________________________________________________________________________________

Kayahan Açar, stage name Kayahan, (29 March 1949 – 3 April 2015) was a Turkish pop music singer-songwriter. He was an accomplished composer, consistently ranking among the best-selling Turkish musicians of all time. Kayahan composed all of his own material and released more than eight best-selling albums during a career spanning three decades.

Early years[edit]

Kayahan Açar was born in İzmir, Turkey on 29 March 1949.[1] He spent his childhood and young adulthood years in Ankara before moving to Istanbul.[2]

Career[edit]

Kayahan released three singles, one LP and eleven compact cassettes and CDs so far. He became known for his songs "Geceler" ("Nights"), "Kar Taneleri" ("Snow Flakes"), "Esmer Günler" ("Brunette Days"), which were sang by Nilüfer, all becoming later classical.[2]
His album "Yemin Ettim" ("I Swore"), released on 3 June 1991, became a bestseller. He coined a motto "Yolu sevgiden geçen herkesle bir gün bir yerde buluşuruz" (One day, we will meet everyone somewhere, whose path goes through love". He wrote and composed also songs for children, and appeared in television shows for children.
On 30 April 1992, he released the album "Odalarda Işıksızım" (Lightless in the Rooms). Ten songs of Kayahan in the album titled "Son Şarkılarım" (My Last Songs), released by the label Raks Müzik in March 1993, became very successful. He continued his career with the albums Benim Penceremden (From My Window), released in January 1995. The song "Allah'ım Neydi Günahım" ("God, What Was My Sin?") has been sung by many singers, and brought him great success. With this album, he introduced to the music world a new, young and talented singer, İpek Tüter, whom he married later in 1999.[2]
Kayahan^'s 1996 album, Canımın Yaprakları (Leaves of My Life) had eight songs and expressed "Allah kimseyi sevgisiz bırakmasın" ("May God not leave anyone without love!"), emphasizing the concept "love" with "Sevgisiz hiçbir şey yapılmaz. Herşeyin başı sevgidir" (Nothing can be done without love. The beginning of everything is love). The next year, he released the album Emrin Olur (Your Call). His ninth album "Beni Azad Et" (Set Me Free) came out in April 1999, and featured nine songs, some of them becoming hits. Among them was a song, "Gömeç", the name of a seaside resort in Balıkesir Province, where he has a residence with a special music studio and where he spent most of his summer time.[3] The album Gönül Sayfam (My Soul's Page), released 26 November 2000, contains the songs "17 Ağustos" ("17 August") commemorating theEarthquake of 17 August 1999 and "Ninni" ("Lullaby") for his new-born daughter Aslı Gönül. In Ne Oldu Can (What Happened Dear?), released 17 December 2002, Kayahan emphasized the importance of the musicians and artists with his song "Bugün Aslında Bayram" (Today Is Indeed Feastday), he wrote in memory of the late singer-songwriter Barış Manço.[2]
Kayahan received his first important award "Altın Portokal" (Golden Orange) with the song "Geceler" (Nights) at the 1986 International Mediterranean Music Contest. He represented Turkey at the Eurovision Song Contest 1990 with his song "Gözlerinin Hapsindeyim" ("Captive in your eyes"), which came 17th. In 2003, he was honored with the Altın Kelebek (Golden Butterfly), and the "MÜYAP" (Music Producers Association) award for the bestselling-success of the album Ne Oldu Can. He released "Kelebeğin Şansı" ("The Luck of the Butterfly") in 2005, and "Biriciğime" ("To My One and Only") on 15 March 2007.[2] He performed many concerts in Turkey and abroad. For his open-air concert held at Kızılay Square in Ankara on the occasion of the Republic Day in 1992, a crowd of about 160,000 people came together. Kayahan performed many relief benefit concerts in order to create or increase awareness about the environment.[2]

Personal life[edit]

Açar was married three times. He made his first marriage to Nur in 1973. From this marriage, which lasted 24 years long, he became father of a daughter Beste (Turkish for music composition), born in 1975. Beste was runner-up for Miss Turkey in 1995. Kayahan remarried to Lale Yılmaz in 1990. The couple divorced in 1996. In 1999, at age fifty, he remarried to his third and current wife 1976-born İpek Tüter. In August 2000, İpek gave birth to their daughter Aslı Gönül.[2]

Illness and death[edit]

In 1990, Kayahan was diagnosed with soft-tissue cancer. He caught the same disease in 2005 again. The illness repeated in 2014, and he was under treatment for cancer.[2]
Kayahan died of multiple organ dysfunction syndrome on 3 April 2015, aged 66, in a hospital in Istanbul. He had been battling small-cell lung cancer since one-and-half years. He had overcome the disease twice before. After a Valentine's Day concert he lately performed with Nilüfer on 14 February 2015, he bid a public farewell to his fans.[1]
He was laid to rest in Kanlıca Cemetery, which overlooks Bosphorus, following a memorial ceremony in Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall, and the religious funeral service at Teşvikiye Mosque, attended also by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and numerous renowned musicians. He was survived by his wife İpek Açar, and daughters Aslı Gönül and Beste.[4][5]

Albums[edit]

  • 1975 - Bekle Gülüm - Ateş (Wait, My Rose - Fire!)
  • 1978 - İstanbul Hatırası - Neden Olmasın (A Souvenir from Istanbul - Why Not?)
  • 1981 - Canım Sıkılıyor Canım (I Get Bored)
  • 1987 - Merhaba Çocuklar (Hello Kids)
  • 1988 - Benim Şarkılarım (My Songs)
  • 1989 - Benim Şarkılarım 2 (Siyah Işıklar) (My Songs Vol. 2: Black Lights)
  • 1991 - Yemin Ettim (I Swore)
  • 1992 - Odalarda Işıksızım (Lightless in the Rooms)
  • 1993 - Son Şarkılarım (My Last Songs)
  • 1995 - Benim Penceremden (From My Window)
  • 1996 - Canımın Yaprakları (Leaves of My Life)
  • 1997 - Emrin Olur (Your Call)
  • 1999 - Beni Azad Et (Set Me Free)
  • 2000 - Gönül Sayfam (My Soul's Page)
  • 2002 - Ne Oldu Can? (What Happened? My Dear)
  • 2004 - Kelebeğin Şansı (The Luck of the Butterfly)
  • 2007 - Biriciğime (To My One and Only)
  • 2011 - 365 Gün (365 Days)

_________________________________________________________________________________

Kayahan Açar, stage name Kayahan, (March 29, 1949 – April 3, 2015) was a Turkish pop music singer and songwriter. He was an accomplished composer, consistently ranking among the best-selling Turkish musicians of all time. Kayahan composed all of his own material and released more than eight best-selling albums during a career spanning three decades.

 Kayahan was born in Izmir, Turkey, on March 29, 1949. He spent his childhood and young adulthood years in Ankara before moving to Istanbul. 

 Kayahan, whose full name was Kayahan Acar, released his first album in 1975 and went on to release nearly two dozen more. Best known for his love songs, he built his musical legacy on his use of idiomatic Turkish to describe emotions. Many of his songs are considered pop classics.

 He first won global recognition at the 1986 International Mediterranean Music Contest in Antalya, a Turkish Mediterranean town, and in 1990 he represented Turkey in the Eurovision Song Contest with his composition "Gozlerinin Hapsindeyim" (“I Am Entrapped by Your Eyes”). The song did not win, but it became a hit in Turkey.
Açar was married three times. He made his first marriage to Nur in 1973. From this marriage, which lasted 24 years long, he became father of a daughter Beste (Turkish for music composition), born in 1975. Beste was runner-up for Miss Turkey in 1995. Kayahan remarried to Lale Yılmaz in 1990. The couple divorced in 1996. In 1999, at age fifty, he remarried to his third wife,1976-born İpek Tüter. In August 2000, İpek gave birth to their daughter Aslı Gönül.




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